Intel Corporation reportedly plans to continue accelerating Celeron family of processors next month, before that it will slash the prices on its Celeron chips, introduce the Pentium 4 3.20GHz processor, i865 (Springdale) chipset series and also cut the prices of its Pentium 4 CPUs.
The Inquirer has found out that mighty Intel will introduce 2.50 and 2.60GHz Celeron processors on the 25th of June for $89 and $102 respectively. Note that the top Celeron chip will cost another $1 lower compared to the price of current 2.40GHz Celeron, hence, overall ASP of the family may be lower depending on the demand for lower-end or higher-end chips. A month before the launch, Intel is cutting the prices on its current line of lower-end microprocessors. The Celeron 2.40, 2.30, 2.20 and 2.10GHz chips will be priced at $85, $79, $74 and $74 respectively. Looks like 2.10 and 2.0GHz chips will soon be phased out and 2.20GHz will become Intel’s minimal offering.
With relatively low price and sufficient performance for basic applications, faster Celeron processors will become even more tasty solutions for mainstream market.
PS. I wonder if dual-channel DDR SDRAM memory and new corporate-stable i865 platform will give a performance boos to the Celeron processor, as now higher-end Intel Celeron chips will probably be used with the new Springdale chipsets.



